Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

spacenews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 276 posts

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#151

Post by mstipetic »

Filligree wrote: post #146
mstipetic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds to me like a new technology and a way of operating has come and we're trying to make it accommodate the old way of doing things. If we really have a way to launch thousands of satellites easily, can't we replace the terrestrial functionality with that? Let's launch hundreds of satellites observing near earth asteroids. If a private company can do it, governments definitely can

Terrestrial telescopes are huge . Hubble is comparatively tiny, and launching a telescope the same size as the ones we use down here would be completely out of the question with any near-term launch capability.

Well let's figure out a way to assemble them in space.

Hubble is thirty years old, and is being used now as a reference. I don't understand all this negativity. Had we had this mindset, Hubble would not have been there

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#152

Post by antognini »

As an astronomer once upon a time I follow a number of my former colleagues on Twitter and pretty regularly see them posting images that have been ruined by Starlink. Here is one from just 12 hours ago:

https://twitter.com/MassiveStarGuy/status/120358895831320576...

This is going to have a bigger impact on the more expensive observations that require long-duration exposures.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#153

Post by La1n »

takk309 wrote: post #74
downrightmike wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software should be able to account for this. If photoshop can remove people from photos, why can't astronomy software remove satellites? Orbit is already pretty cluttered and we can't remove much that gets stuck up there already.

This isn't just about astrophotography, this has to do with real science too. Remember, most science work is already on a tight budget and now they will have to waste some of that budget sorting through the added visual clutter.

Yes, and SpaceX seems to be actively downplaying that fact.

>. “We want to make sure we do the right thing to make sure little kids can look through their telescope,” she said. “Astronomy is one of the few things that gets little kids excited about space.”

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#154

Post by clon »

> “No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.”

It seems probable that this is one of the things that can be ruled out. I find it inconceivable that none of the thousands of brilliant heads in SpaceX never thought of this.

- They spoke, but were not heard

- They never felt like speaking

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#155

Post by La1n »

greglindahl wrote: post #131
ForHackernews wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk did not found Tesla, but would like you to believe that he did: https://www.quora.com/Did-Elon-Musk-found-Tesla-1 Maybe 'charlatan' is unfair, but he's certainly more of a sales-and-hype man than a real engineering type. I don't understand why so many technical people are snowed by his razzle dazzle.

"Founder" is a label decided by the company, not by outsiders. Many Silicon Valley companies have "founders" who were not there on Day 1.

Founder is a word that has meaning, we shouldn't let companies dictate our use of language.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#156

Post by wpietri »

mstipetic wrote: post #151
Filligree wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrestrial telescopes are huge . Hubble is comparatively tiny, and launching a telescope the same size as the ones we use down here would be completely out of the question with any near-term launch capability.

Well let's figure out a way to assemble them in space. Hubble is thirty years old, and is being used now as a reference. I don't understand all this negativity. Had we had this mindset, Hubble would not have been there

Part of the negativity is who benefits from the problem versus who has to pay to fix it. If SpaceX were causing a problem for astronomers while also for free launching radically better space-based tools, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal. But instead SpaceX hopes to pocket a lot of money, while the harms are falling on other people.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#157

Post by kbenson »

mstipetic wrote: post #151
Filligree wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrestrial telescopes are huge . Hubble is comparatively tiny, and launching a telescope the same size as the ones we use down here would be completely out of the question with any near-term launch capability.

Well let's figure out a way to assemble them in space. Hubble is thirty years old, and is being used now as a reference. I don't understand all this negativity. Had we had this mindset, Hubble would not have been there

Hubble's mirror is 8 feet in diameter, and you aren't going to be assembling something as high precision as that in space, at least not from a few components. If we had the manufacturing capability to make it from scratch in space, maybe, but that's a much larger enterprise.

There is a question of whether 100 a foot diameter telescopes can work as well or better than one 8 foot one. Or 500. If it's about photons hitting the lens, do enough lenses in an area and post-processing make up for the fact that they aren't connected?

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#158

Post by ceejayoz »

shaklee3 wrote: post #141
ceejayoz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satellite internet has indeed existed for decades, but via small numbers of geostationary satellites (Iridium only has 76 active satellites; Starlink launches about that many in every launch ). That means severely constrained bandwidth, and high latency given the ~50,000 mile round trip the data has to take. It's also expensive to get a satellite out there. Low Earth orbit constellations have both lower latency (a co…

I'm well aware of the scale of starlink, but the speeds delivered by starlink won't be any faster than the existing GEO satellites at the time, not will it be cheaper. The OP talked about high speed internet, which, in most cases, the latency doesn't matter. Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit. If you have a source that says otherwise, please post i…

Iridium currently offers a handful of megabits at best, doesn't it? Starlink's loading 20 Gbps on each satellite, and has successfully tested up to 610 megabits on a connection with a military plane. (https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin...)

> Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit.

I'm not clear on whether you're referring to the ground station, the satellite constellation, or the cost of service here.

That said, industry laughed at the idea of reusable rockets, and Blackberry thought Steve Jobs faked the iPhone pre-release. Industry estimates have been known to be badly wrong.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#159

Post by ceejayoz »

kbenson wrote: post #157
mstipetic wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's figure out a way to assemble them in space. Hubble is thirty years old, and is being used now as a reference. I don't understand all this negativity. Had we had this mindset, Hubble would not have been there

Hubble's mirror is 8 feet in diameter, and you aren't going to be assembling something as high precision as that in space, at least not from a few components. If we had the manufacturing capability to make it from scratch in space, maybe, but that's a much larger enterprise. There is a question of whether 100 a foot diameter telescopes can work as well or better than one 8 foot one. Or 500. If it's about photons hitt…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#160

Post by wpietri »

readams wrote: post #8
topologistics wrote: post #3

>“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.” That is absolutely ridiculous. The Iridium satellites were decommissioned recently and it was a big deal because, for the longest time, you had to check for "iridium flares" if you were using any type of sensitive equipment. Basically, the entire class of iridium satellites was highly reflective and they tended t…

They announced their plans years ago. The astronomy community could have raised concerns then. The fact that they didn't would indicate nobody connected the dots.

Your theory is that corporate responsibility ends when you make the first press release? That if specialists everywhere aren't paying attention to the business news, we've arrived at "who could have known"?
Post reply on HN